Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) president Pat McCormack has accused the Government of "selling out" family dairy farms and rolling over for the European Commission on the question of maintaining Ireland’s current derogation under the nitrates directive.
McCormack said that the Government’s “abject surrender” on the issue meant that Ireland’s multi-billion euro dairy sector is now in a very dangerous place due to failing farm prices and production restrictions.
He said that effective control of the most sustainable and profitable part of Ireland's farming and agri sector had been handed over to the Commission without so much as a murmur of protest by those charged with defending it.
Defence
"One would have to ask the question whether the Government had ever intended defending the derogation or whether their public statements had been a charade," he said.
The continuation of Ireland’s 250kg N/ha derogation was both absolutely necessary and eminently possible if the Government was willing to mount a skilful campaign based on the evidence that is already emerging, McCormack argued.
"No such campaign was ever mounted by this Government and this Minister and consequently we have had our nitrates limits reduced to 220kg N/ha in defiance of all the evidence - economic and environmental - that the existing 250kg N/ha is perfectly compatible with improving water quality while maintaining the production capacity so indispensable when prices are falling to the extent that farmer revenue will be down by in excess of €2bn this year,” said McCormack.
This Government has put a nail in the coffin of many family dairy farms
McCormack added that with this one decision, this Government has put a nail in the coffin of many family dairy farms that have been worked for generations.
“There's no point in being polite here; the Government’s defence of our position was just downright unacceptable and amounted to an abject surrender of what was and is a vital national sector.
"Our grass-based dairy sector is the jewel in our agri crown and the Government - without a murmur of complaint from Minister McConalogue - just handed over an absolutely key component to the Commission with nothing coming back to us," he said.
Even today, even after this surrender, McCormack said that farmers cannot check their nitrates figures online and argued that there’s no firm date for this online check facility to be put in place.
"The degree of real commitment shown by our Government can be gauged by the fact that they didn’t even travel over to Brussels to make the case.
"They were happy to be told off via a video call and that’s just about all they deserved. Everyone connected with this disaster - and I’m specifically including the Government’s backbench TDs - should be ashamed of this whole episode and will have to own the consequences,” concluded McCormack.
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